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Monday, June 4, 2012

A School Painted Magenta

We are spending the long
weekend of the 21st of May (the celebration of the Glorias Navales of 1879) with four Chilean friends in
the small coastal city of Valdivia.

The next morning the
rain kept coming - but between showers the air was bright and clean and full of
rainbows, so we decided to step out of our showers for an hour or two and go
for a walk.

After an autumn in
Santiago, where the air is so thick and full of dust and gasoline that it piles
up in corners and silts up in the alleys behind buildings, breathing Valdivia's
morning air was a little like being drunk - we were walking around with our
arms wide open, taking it in by the bucketful.

Valdivia is a
pretty, primary-colored town. Schools
are painted magenta, or in royal-blue-and-yellow stripes. Houses come in turquoise and apple-green and
apple-red. The Plaza de Armas is less martial and
more brass-band-stand-y than most Plazas de Armas in Chile - the European
settlement here was mostly German, and the dominant aesthetic is one of
gingerbread fretwork and gables, rather than heroic plinths and fountains.

About Me

I am an Australian architect, married to a Canadian who followed me home.
In September 2011 we relocated from rural South Australia to the bustling metropolis of Santiago, Chile, where it's warmer than Canada, but less insect-y than Australia.
How's that for a compromise?